The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth — Volume 7 (of 8)

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THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH VOL. VII
William Wordsworth after B. R. Haydon
EDITED BY WILLIAM KNIGHT
VOL. VII
Dove Cottage Grasmere
London MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. NEW YORK: MACMILLAN & CO. 1896
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The only poems belonging to the years 1821-2 were the Ecclesiastical Sonnets, originally called Ecclesiastical Sketches. These were written at intervals, from 1821 onwards, but the great majority belong to 1821. They were first published in 1822, in three parts; 102 Sonnets in all. Ten were added in the edition of 1827, several others in the years 1835 and 1836, and fourteen in 1845,—the final edition of 1850 containing 132.
After Wordsworth's return from the Continent in 1820, he visited the Beaumonts at Coleorton, and as Sir George was then about to build a new Church on his property, conversation turned frequently to ecclesiastical topics, and gave rise to the idea of embodying the History of the Church of England in a series of Ecclesiastical Sketches in verse. The Sonnets Nos. XXXIX., XL., and XLI., in the third series, entitled, Church to be erected , and New Churchyard , are probably those to which Wordsworth refers as written first, in memory of his morning walk with Sir George Beaumont to fix the site of the Church: but it was the discussions which were being carried on in the British Parliament and elsewhere, in 1821, on the subject of Catholic Disabilities, that led him to enlarge his idea, and project a series of Sonnets dealing with the whole course of the Ecclesiastical History of his country. His brother Christopher—while Dean and Rector of Bocking, and domestic chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury—had published, in 1809, six volumes of Ecclesiastical Biography; or, the Lives of Eminent Men connected with the History of Religion in England . Southey's Book of the Church ,—to which Wordsworth refers in the Fenwick note prefixed to his Sonnets —was not published till 1823; and Wordsworth says, in a note to the edition of 1822, that his own work was far advanced before he was aware that Southey had taken up the subject. As several of the Sonnets, however, are well illustrated by passages in Southey's book, I have given a number of extracts from the latter work in the editorial notes.